Features (not including available for Russia and CIS only)

Behind the Scenes

Oksana Yushko

Published on 08/06/12

© Oksana Yushko

The Bolshoi Theater in Moscow held an open­ing of the theater after 6 years of recon­struc­tion with an opera of Ruslan and Lyud­m­ila. Ruslan and Lyud­m­ila is Mikhail Glinka’s second opera. The first time the opera was staged in the Bolshoi was on Decem­ber 9, 1846. It was later fol­lowed by nine dif­fer­ent pro­duc­tions and 700 per­form­ances. Pro­duc­tion dir­ector Dmitry Chernyakov believes that the cur­rent opera is the only one of the ver­sions that has a happy end­ing and it suits the his­tor­ical reopen­ing of the Bolshoi Theater, one of the main land­marks of the Rus­sian cap­ital and a sym­bol of Rus­sian culture.

The theater, built in 1825, closed for recon­struc­tion in 2005. The Rus­sian gov­ern­ment spent 21 bil­lion rubles ($681 mil­lion) on the res­tor­a­tion, which involved more than 3,600 design­ers, build­ers and engineers.

Share on Twitter

Highslide for Wordpress Plugin
salt images - photo agency